2017 in Review: STOP-IT’s work to identify, prevent, and respond to human trafficking

To A Happy Holidays And
A Hopeful New Year!

2017 is a year most of us will never forget. As we near 2018, the STOP-IT team wishes you a happy holidays and a hopeful new year! In particular, we want to celebrate the hope that was brought to the lives of so many survivors through your incredible generosity this year. In 2017, you all joined us at a summer concert and storytelling benefit to support our programming, helped us with in kind donations like mattresses for survivors’ new homes, donated a new couch for our drop-in, provided us with toiletry baskets and backpacks, and gave holiday gifts to 20 case management participants and 20 drop-in attendees! And that doesn’t even include the countless hours our volunteers have donated to help us man our hotline and provide support within our drop-in! We can’t thank you enough!

Our team has been busy, too. This year, we answered 450 hotline calls to date, provided initial crisis intervention support to 58 potential survivors, assisted 45 female-identified youth at our biweekly drop-in, supported 40 survivors of sex and labor trafficking with intensive case management services, and took part in over 30 trainings to better the community response to human trafficking. Through our task force work, we held our annual human trafficking conference, which was attended by 300 people from across the country, conducted three community trainings in Austin, Humboldt Park and North Lawndale, and hosted our annual Coordinated Service Referral Network training for service providers. It’s been a productive 2017!

Thank you to the Junior League of Chicago, Sunlight Project and our STOP-IT volunteers for helping with our drop in Christmas closet and party!

Would you like your dollars to go toward critical supportive services all year long? #FightforGood and donate monetarily to our STOP-IT Red Kettle here!

As we embark on 2018, we are excited to have more opportunities for training and outreach through a new grant and to continue to partner with the anti-trafficking community on a variety of initiatives. But we can’t do this work alone. Your support would help us in making an even bigger impact. We are at 21% of our year end goal of $5,000, and we’d love you to end the year by helping us reach our goal! Donate to support our programming here.

To a 2018 that is full of joy, success, and hope for you and yours, and of course, for the amazingly resilient people with whom we work!